


what was supposed to be (we are)

by fuechsli



Series: andreil week 2019 [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: #andreilweek2019, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Andrew tries, Angst, Day 1, Fire, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Mentions of Blood, Necromancy, This is seriously AU, Time Magic, and therefore ooc, he's as gentle as he knows to be, how do I tag this?, kind of, mixed up quotes - on purpose!, warnings for Lola's torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-02 07:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuechsli/pseuds/fuechsli
Summary: Neil barely escapes his father's clutches, heavily injured, and he's losing his magic.Andrew saves him.-----Neil forgot, sometimes, that magic didn’t inherently mean bad things.That it could be used for good, too, if only the wielder wanted it to.(If they didn’t just want to make you hurt and watch you bleed.)-----written for #andreilweek2019day 1 ≫ alternate meeting | fantasy au | magic au





	what was supposed to be (we are)

**Author's Note:**

> my first (and already late) contribution for #andreilweek2019.  
> day 1 ≫ alternate meeting | fantasy au | magic au
> 
> if you read the notes for this series you'll know why I'm not working on anything else right now: there was a lot going on in my life lately, but I'm finally at a point where I'll be able to focus on my writing again! (or, I will be, as soon as I'm back from my vacation in Canada in the end of July :) )
> 
> as for this fic:  
> first off, the **warnings** , because I've gone pretty morbid here, I think...  
> there's gore, heavily implied torture at nathan’s and lola’s hands, not-medical amputation (sort of), off-screen minor character death  
> and if you think anything else needs a warning please tell me and i will add it!
> 
> also, this REALLY did not go where i thought it would, but somehow i still like it.  
> but it’s weird, and underdeveloped, and i can only hope that it makes sense.
> 
> this is not beta’d, hella hurried, and finished only shortly before midnight. 
> 
> enjoy.

Neil couldn’t outfly the fire. The smoke chased him, the flames licked at his feet. His wings beat a desperate rhythm, the singed feathers barely supporting him.

Worse than the heat, worse than the acrid bite of charred flesh and bile at the back of his throat, though, was the pain. The pain was everywhere, and all-encompassing.

Neil had never been a stranger to pain, but this— this hurt in body and soul, this ruined the very magic he held.

A hoarse cry was ripped from his throat when the fire leapt up at him — the mice in the underbrush fled, the trees screamed in agony. Lola didn’t pay them any mind, no, she reached for him again, high, higher, and — a stupid maneuver, frantic but still a second too late, and the flesh on his left leg sizzled. Neil drew in a breath that was more pain than oxygen, tried, desperately, to see a way that would get him out of this mess, just for a few hours, just long enough to… process, to think, to figure out where to go from here.

He didn’t want to die just yet, didn’t want to follow on his mother’s footsteps, not without at least making the most of her sacrifice.

He just didn’t know how, not with Lola still hot on his heels (way too literally), with the fog in his mind and the shock such a looming shadow that threatened to take on too familiar features.

He weaved through the trees, tried to take ways a human couldn’t fit through, but Lola didn’t let that slow her down, not when she knew exactly that Neil was getting weaker with every passing second, with every beat of his wings that didn’t lead to freedom.

Then—

His wings clipped a branch, but Lola stumbled when Neil crossed a small river, dangerously close to falling.

Then—

The chase went on.

* * *

Night began to turn into day when Neil finally broke free of the barrier of the trees, when Lola was left roaring in frustration, held back by a skeleton hand on her ankle, by bones that refused to turn to ashes, no matter how hot she burned.

Neil’s mind was hazy with pain by that time, and his form flickered. He wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, not with that last burst of magic he’d just expended.

He almost didn’t care anymore.

Underneath him, all signs of forest life disappeared, until he was gliding through the outskirts of a town, a city almost, one that was buzzing with life even at this time of the morning, unaware of the horrors taking place not too far away.

Neil breathed, and he smelled gas and exhaust fumes and the dust of city streets instead of wet dirt and fire and ashes and for once, it almost felt like home, something close to relief filling him.

It provided a distraction, a momentary reprieve, but only served to remind Neil of how desperately he needed a safe place to hide, somewhere to take care of his wounds, to assess the worst of the damage, and do everything he could to stop his magic from disappearing entirely.

(He refused to think further along that vein, though, and all of its implications. Refused to be destroyed quite so completely.)

He concentrated, instead, on his memories, on the silly nursery rhymes his mother used to make up to try and make him remember all their contacts in various cities, but he didn’t think that there had ever been a mention of Columbia, South Carolina.

But there had been something else, hadn’t there? Something important, or maybe someone.

But Neil’s focus was slipping, and his eyes drooped, his leg burned, and his wings felt heavier with every beat, now that the adrenaline was fading, now that he was momentarily safe in the anonymity of the city, and he couldn’t quite think clearly.

He hated that it came to this, time and time again.

He hated that this time was so different to all the others, that there was no one waiting for him to chew him out for slipping up; there was no one left, no one _at all_ , no one that cared for him, no one to come back to. For the first time in years — the first time in _forever_ — he was all alone, and he was left wondering if it was even worth it anymore.

Was wondering if all the pain and exhaustion even paid off for anything except more time — time to suffer, to doubt, another attempt to simply survive that would, undoubtedly, eventually end in failure.

He couldn’t allow himself to think like that. Couldn’t afford it, not when he wanted to make it another day, not so close to—

He didn’t see the oncoming car, only heard the shriek of brakes and realized too late that he wasn’t flying high over the city anymore; he’d dropped to street level and the oncoming truck’s driver’s window was almost on a height with Neil’s body.

Fuck.

A breath.

The beat of a wing, a try to—

His right wing gave in, gave up, buckled under the weight of the last however many hours.

In the last moment, the split-second of a heartbeat, a shattered fragment of time, Neil braced for the impact, prepared for the end.

(There was no one to pray to, after all, nothing left to say, nothing he would leave behind.)

In that kaleidoscope of a moment, Neil felt calm, almost free, at last, because he knew where he’d go now, and he knew that his father or his men couldn’t follow him there.

Then the colors broke open and the end didn’t come.

Light shattered.

Neil forgot, sometimes, that magic didn’t inherently mean bad things.

That it could be used for good, too, if only the wielder wanted it to.

(If they didn’t just want to make you hurt and watch you bleed.)

“Come _on_ ,” someone called, and it sounded as though it hadn’t been the first time. “Get the fuck out of the way!”

Neil cawed, surprised, and found himself able to move. Found the muscles of his wings listening to his commands, although the whole world seemed caught in suspension, arrested in a moment in time. The light broke away in all of its components when Neil moved through air and time alike, swirled around him like a rainbow in physical form, split particles of light and air, photons and nitrogen and oxygen. He’d never seen anything like it, and he’d seen a lot.

This kind of magic was rare, he realized, and it was why he was here, the important something and someone that might be able to help him out. That was already helping him out, it seemed like.

“ _Move!_ ”

Though probably not on their own volition, it seemed like, if the impatient, annoyed tone of voice was anything to go by.

So Neil did.

(To his own surprise almost, because he couldn’t really believe it still, his claws didn’t get caught in the fabric of time when he eventually stretched his good leg for balance, and the feathers of his wings didn’t get tangled up in it.)

Then, the very second he’d moved enough to the side to not risk getting caught in the turbulences of the fast-driving truck, time resumed its passing, an implosion of all the colors of the light. It was almost deafening in its silence.

With the resuming of the passing of time came the pain, with pain came exhaustion, and exhaustion was the reason why his wings gave out on him, suddenly and unforgivingly, until he plunged down to the sidewalk in a more or less controlled tumble.

He landed hard on his knees, caught his fall with his hands, and knew the moment the scraped skin of his skin bled into the cobblestone of the sidewalk that he’d just sealed his fate with this careless transformation. He knew the moment he sucked in a breath through the absolutely blinding agony setting his bloodstream aflame that his magic was gone. He knew that he hadn’t known true desperation before now, that nothing Lola could possibly think to inflict on him would be worse than this.

Neil wanted to curl up, hide away his aching wounds, and forget that the world existed for a while.

But every little movement hurt, every breath he took jarred his injuries — _injuries is a good word,_ beautifully abstract, no need to think about exactly what it entailed, what they meant.

A solid, living and breathing, presence next to him startled him out of his thoughts, then made him flinch and reach for a weapon that wasn’t there anymore, that was stuck in the cavity of Romero’s eye (not that he seemed to care about it at the time, the undead asshole).

Another realization hit him, then, and it was horrible enough to make him freeze up, and it felt like every part of his being shut down at the same time.

He couldn’t feel his owl anymore.

Magic refused to listen to his call. It ignored his silent pleas, the anger, the hopelessness. He could feel it, still, but it hovered just out of reach, and no matter how he far bent and stretched, his fingertips never managed to even just brush it.

His wings were gone and his magic had fled; after it all, the gods had abandoned him.

(He didn’t doubt that the end was near, now, didn’t think that there was any hope left, any chance of survival.)

“Snap out of it!”

Again, Neil followed the command barked at him almost subconsciously.

His head snapped up, and as soon as he managed to focus, his eyes found the owner of the voice. He was short and dressed in all black, from the combat boots to the bands wrapped around his arms from wrist to elbow, a silver ring gleamed in his left ear, another in his lower lip. His hair was blond and messy, but when he turned his head to the side for a second, hazel gaze never leaving Neil’s, Neil could see that the back of his head was shaved and dyed in pastel rainbow colors.

He was unlike everything that Neil expected, and yet Neil found that surprise was the wrong word for what he felt. Astonishment, maybe, or a faint sense of recognition. A thing beyond magic that told him “ _it’s you. I know you; of course it’s you_ ,” that pointed out with a crystal-clear kind of precision that the other man hadn’t touched him (yet), had only used his words to snap him out of his panic, a reaction that he’d only encountered in few people who had seen him like this, and none of them got it right on the first try.

Neil opened his mouth, closed it again. There weren’t any words for this.

It probably didn’t help that his _injuries_ had almost become numb now, that he could feel the trickle of blood running down his spine, pooling in the small of his back, coating his sides. He felt hot and foggy, and he was afraid that his arms wouldn’t be able to hold him up for much longer, they felt so shaky now.

“Fuck,” Neil breathed out. He closed his eyes against a wave of pain, and when he opened them again, the other man was so much closer now. He still didn’t touch him, though. Didn’t say anything, either. Just continued to stare intensely at Neil, almost as if he recognized him, too, and tried to figure out why.

But that was ridiculous.

Only Neil had lost enough blood (and magic, he shouldn’t let himself forget about the magic) to be delusional, right?

Only Neil had lost all the things that used to define him in the span of a single day and then some.

Only Neil was hurt and lost and trying to find solace in this man whose existence had only ever been a rumored legend, a story told in the old tongues of magic, because people like him weren’t supposed to exist (anymore), because time was supposed to be one of the constants humans weren’t supposed to be able to be messed with.

(Then again, people said the same thing about death — and what was Neil but a Necromancer?)

(Then again, look at where that got him.)

“What is wrong with you?” the man asked, eventually, no patience left in his voice, and Neil wanted to laugh, to ask “What _isn’t_ wrong with me?”.

But he didn’t, because he know that that would hurt, because there wasn’t any _time_ , no matter how ironic that seemed considering his current company, because it was only a matter of seconds now until the blood would seep through his shirt and soak the cobblestone beneath his body — Neil hadn’t ever been really good with his technical understanding of magic, had never bothered to learn all the theoretical things about it, so he wasn’t sure how much time had to pass until the magical properties left a Celestial’s bloodstream after his wings had been cut off; wasn’t sure if there was a way to avert what usually happened when he let seven drops of his blood fall to the floor, or if there wasn’t even a possibility of it happening anymore. He didn’t know and he wasn’t keen on just letting it happen, so he had to get out of this situation somehow, as soon as possible.

Neil didn’t laugh, scrambled for words, and when his thoughts just screeched to a halt because _his wings had been cut off_ (the gleaming blade of a butcher’s knife, his mother’s unmoving corpse in the corner of his eye, the urge to call out to her soul and put it back into her body — Lola’s smile and fire and fingernails, Romero’s rotten hands and needles, his father’s laugh and steel and pain, ripped out feathers soaked in blood, a weight off his back that was just _wrong_ —); when they screeched to a halt he lost the control over his tongue and out slipped the words that were never meant to be said.

“You were supposed to be a pipe dream,” he said. He bit his tongue until he tasted copper in his mouth and didn’t say, “We are not supposed to exist, the both of us, but I was always meant to be alone. I was not supposed to find you, we were not supposed to meet. I wanted to keep you safe even though I never knew you, but I was wrong because I _do_ , and this is all _wrong_ , I am wrong, we are wrong, but this feels so right, please keep me safe,” but apparently he wasn’t quite successful, or maybe the other man had other talents as well, because he said, “I hate that word,” and his face didn’t give anything away.

“What word?” Neil choked out, though his lips felt numb and his head was spinning. He was seeing colors again, as if time had slowed down. Maybe it had.

“Please.”

“But I didn’t say—”

“Doesn’t matter. Can I touch you?”

“What—” Neil blinked, looked down, and pressed a hand to his abdomen when he saw that the blood was pooling there. He almost lost his balance, breathed out a “yes,” because what else was he supposed to say? It was not like there was much of a choice here, much of anything left.

Warm hands steadied him, wrapped around his upper arm. When Neil wasn’t in immediate danger of falling over anymore, one of the hands let go, cupped his jaw instead. Neil found his head tipped up, and his gaze was caught by the depth in these hazel eyes. He couldn’t look away.

“My name is Andrew Minyard,” the man said.

“I’m the last Chronomancer. I hear thoughts, sometimes, when people project them outwards and I’m in their vicinity.” He stated his sentences like facts, and he radiated a calmness, a detached kind of emotionlessness that helped reign in Neil’s panic, that helped him get over the fact, for a moment, that he was Wingless, now.

“You are the last Necromancer. Your soul can take the form of an owl. Your magic is not gone.”

Neil’s calmness vanished, and blood roared in his ears. “That’s not—“ _supposed to happen_. (Neil recognized, with a sudden clarity, that “ _not supposed to_ ” didn’t mean much; he wouldn’t be here otherwise, and Andrew wouldn’t, either. The rules of the universe might be different than he’d always been taught — maybe the gods hadn’t told them everything, maybe Andrew knew something Neil didn’t.)

He let his mouth fall shut. Tilted his head to the side when he felt Andrew’s thumb tracing a line under his eye in a calming gesture. His skin was rough, calloused. It still felt right, Neil couldn’t deny that. He felt safe, here, and it was strange because there were still located in the middle of a sidewalk in a random street in Columbia, South Carolina, and Neil wasn’t sure of anything anymore, but he knew this: he could trust this strange blond man, and it wasn’t only because the size of his body meant nothing in relation to the extent of his soul, the power of his magic. It was deeper than that, more profound, almost ancient.

“My brother is a talented in healing,” Andrew continued, then, as if Neil hadn’t said anything. “I will not let you die.”

He didn’t say “ _I am not a pipe dream,_ ” didn’t say “ _I know you, too, and I’m not going anywhere,_ ” but Neil could hear the words anyways.

They were not alone anymore, and maybe they were right where they were supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> this has an inspiration page on pinterest, if anyone's interesting in seeing just exactly how this escalated: [day one](https://www.pinterest.ch/nadunawrites/andreilweek2019-aftg/1-alternate-meeting-fantasy-au-magic-au/)
> 
> uuuh... idk. hope you liked it.
> 
> at least i liked writing it, even though it was a real journey from start to finish. I had a vague idea about where it was supposed to go, but kevin or any other characters refused to show up and neil refused to fall unconscious long enough to be transported to the foxhole court, soo... this happened? idk, a lot of it was just throwing out ideas for a magical world and trying to puzzle them together somehow. i really hope it makes sense, because while it does to me, i'm probably not the best person to ask right now..
> 
> i am sorry for the hurried ending, though. i just wanted to get it done because i feel like i would have drawn it out endlessly otherwise. this au was great!  
> i could be convinced to revisit again, i think, if there’s enough interest ;)
> 
> or if you don’t want a full-fledged fic for it you can also just ask for clarification on some point or the background story/world building. i’d be happy to answer!
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](https://baerlii.tumblr.com) or [here](https://littlewriterling.tumblr.com), i'm not very active at the moment on either account, but i try xD


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